Rebecca left and I stood in the middle of the foyer trying to decide what to do. Work or go back to Lisa’s? Rebecca had disrupted my flow. I carried the container of water and the cotton-wrapped dowel to the small kitchenette at the rear of the building. Opening the cupboard beneath the sink to throw away the cotton, I was greeted by the yeasty smell of beer from a few crushed cans in the recycling bin. One or more of the guys were drinking on the job, I guessed. The scent took me back to my party days at UNC, only a little more than a year ago, a year that felt like a lifetime. I suddenly yearned for something I couldn’t name. Not the beer. Not my old friends. Trey? The perfect Trey I’d thought him to be? Maybe. But I knew it was something bigger that I longed for. My innocence, maybe. I wasn’t sure, but I stood in the small kitchen, my hands across my chest in a sad little hug. Whatever it was I wanted, I knew I could never get it back. I thought again of Emily Maxwell and imagined that she, too, yearned for her life before the accident. Before so much had been stolen from her. Oh God, how I hated thinking about her! Surprising tears burned my eyes and I was suddenly back in my car on that hideous night, remembering what we’d done to her. Yes, we, because even though Trey had been driving, it could just as easily have been me behind the wheel. It could have been me who T-boned Emily’s little Nissan at that dark, wet intersection. I’d been as toasted as Trey when we left the party and it was only at the last second that I turned my keys over to him. I would always remember the awful moment when I realized what we’d done, the sickening image of the totaled car in front of us, its headlights still piercing the darkness, the deafening, continuous sound of the car horn that filled the air after the crunch of steel against steel. The instant sobriety. Omigod, did we kill someone? The shock when Trey flung open the driver’s side door and said, “I wasn’t here! Got it?” I watched him leap from the car and take off into the dark woods. Even through my shock, I understood what he meant. His scholarship. Georgetown Law. He was brilliant, and he’d worked so hard. He had everything to lose. I loved him. I’d protect him.